


Here Comes the Sun

by chai4anne



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-27
Updated: 2009-09-27
Packaged: 2019-05-15 11:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14789648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chai4anne/pseuds/chai4anne
Summary: Somewhere in the middle of December, Josh stops sleeping.





	Here Comes the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

  
Author's notes: If anyone still hasn't watched the whole series, this will spoil you through \"King Corn,\" but goes off into its own little world around \"Freedonia.\"

Feedback: Please

Archiving: Of course

Thanks: to Liz for telling me to fix it up and post it, and for helping check the dates and typos.  


* * *

Here Comes the Sun  
by Chai

 

**December 2005**

Somewhere in the middle of December, Josh stops sleeping. It’s pretty ironic, really, he thinks: longest nights of the year and he’s not getting any good out of them. Oh, he sleeps a little, of course; it doesn’t feel like enough, but then, nothing does these days. Though if he thinks about it, he can’t really remember the last time anything did. So he doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t let himself think about it, except in those sudden, unbidden snapshots that come to him when he isn’t looking for them and doesn’t want them: a flash of golden hair; the two of them singing a song together, her voice weaving in and out of his; holding her on his lap in a taxi as they drive laughing through the snow; or sitting together in his darkened office, watching t.v., sharing a beer. 

When that happens, he shakes his head and gets up and walks somewhere, fast. It mostly happens when he’s trying to sleep, which is why he doesn’t try as much as he should. One night a line from a poem starts dinging around in his head and won’t stop until he gets up and goes and finds it in one of his old college texts, stuck away in a corner of a shelf in his living room. It’s one of Donne’s: “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day.” He reads the first verse out loud but under his breath, as if there were somebody lurking around the corner who might hear and laugh at him for reading poetry:

“'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,  
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;  
The sun is spent, and now his flasks  
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;  
The world's whole sap is sunk;  
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,  
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,  
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,  
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Yeah, he’d always liked that one: the words so strange and twisted and difficult, but even in college they’d made a shiver run up his back. He’d liked quite a few of Donne’s poems—liked their flagrant sexiness, of course, and the way they worked like little puzzles, so intricate and clever, so much more intriguing to his mind than most of the tedious stuff they’d had to slog through in those required classes. But what had really hit him had been the intensity of the feeling that came through in some of them—four hundred years later, and you could still feel the man’s passion for the woman he loved, the acuteness of his need for her, the giddiness of his exhilaration when they were together, his absolute devastation when she was gone. Like this one: the shortest day, the midnight of the year—the life-force of everything dropped to its lowest point, like trees’ sap sunk down into the frozen winter earth—the whole world utterly dark and cold and dead—and yet this man feeling darker and colder and _deader_ than anything else around him, because he was never going to see the woman he loved again. 

Josh hunches his shoulders and chucks the book onto a chair, then slips on a coat and lets himself out of the apartment for another hell-paced walk through Georgetown’s slushy streets. A late party is just breaking up in one of the houses near his; the door opens, sending light flooding out onto the sidewalk, along with a stream of well-dressed men and women calling out their thank-yous and good-nights. A tall woman with long, shimmering blonde hair is leaning on the arm of some guy in a tuxedo, laughing. Josh turns on his heel and walks back abruptly the way he came. _Get a grip_ , he tells himself, harshly. _You might have a campaign to run soon; you’ve got to get a grip._

The Congressman’s call comes, and he says his good-byes. It’s every bit as hard as he expects it to be, everyone except the President angry or disappointed—and _he_ must have been disappointed too, surely. Or was he? Maybe more relieved to see Josh go; he must have been messing up for quite a while not to be trusted with Leo’s job when Leo had that heart attack, for _C.J._ to be trusted more than he was. . . . But that’s another one of those things he shouldn’t let himself think about. He stays up most of the night planning the first six weeks of the campaign. 

New Hampshire is the first stop. They take the red-eye to Logan and drive from there; it’s cheaper than the alternatives. Book an inexpensive motel. Shake hands by the dump. Look for a place to rent for headquarters; it had better be cheap, too. 

He goes to see Will. It’s funny having him on the other team; it’s been a long time since Josh has been on the other side from anyone he actually liked. Though if it’s strange with Will, it’s beyond strange with—his mind switches gears, fast. It zooms in on the differences between the offices: all that dark, establishment wood in Russell’s, all that junk in his. He wishes he’d got to the other building before Will, but they couldn’t have afforded it anyway. He tells Ronna to make sure they’re meeting firecode, and gets on with the job. But when he’s trying to get to sleep at night the Russell office drifts into his mind again, and with it Donna, working there with Will. This time he can’t make himself stop: the images are too fresh and raw, the soundtrack stuck on an endless loop: “You should be with me . . . with me . . . with me . . . .” And her response, angry and jabbing, again and again and again. . . .

Five weeks later he’s running on empty, running on fumes—and the fumes are drying up. Alternative energy, that’s what he needs. What the campaign needs, too—solar cells, wind power, geothermal—and now he’s off, making notes to talk over when the Congressman wakes up. He’s got his own sources of alternative energy, anyway: caffeine, and too much to do. As long as he’s got ten times too many things for one man to think about, he’s okay. He does sleep, of course. You can’t live without some sleep, and he’s still alive, isn’t he? He’s getting enough. Enough, enough, enough. . . .

His mouth is dry in the morning and tastes like stale coffee. It tastes that way even after he’s brushed his teeth. His eyes feel like there’s sandpaper in them, the muscles all down one side are aching with that deep ache that runs down to the bone, but a few minutes in the shower will loosen everything up enough to get by on. Five minutes. Maybe ten. He squints into the mirror when he’s shaving, the razor feeling like a ten-pound weight at the end of his arm, and thinks he looks like crap but no one will notice; it’s a good thing Donna—and he drops that thought in a hurry, and thinks about the ten-point alternative energy plan he drew up at 2:00 last night, wondering what he left out. He finds the coffee spilled all over the bureau because he didn’t put the carafe down square on the base when he started it; he’s doing that a lot lately. He tries to wipe the mess up, but misses the splash down the front of the bureau and a puddle in one corner. There’s a little cold coffee left from last night in the bottom of the coffeemaker, and he drinks it straight over the side without looking for a cup, then puts the carafe down on the bureau top and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand while walking quickly out the door. His tie is crooked, and there’s a couple of spots on it already, but only on the dark part of the stripe. Nobody’s going to notice.

The campaign gets a bit more money, which means they can stay in a chain hotel instead of a mom-and-pop one. He wishes they hadn’t when Russell’s team turns out to be staying there, too. Bumping into her is more painful than he would have thought possible. He tries to break the ice with some lame banter, but she doesn’t want it broken. That night he never even closes his eyes. Once he actually crosses the hall to take the bull by the horns and talk to her and try to fix things, but the thought of the cold looks he got from her that afternoon, and the still icier ones he’s likely to get if he wakes her up in the middle of the night, stops him before his hand touches the door. He slumps and turns back to his room, feeling like the biggest coward on the face of the planet.

Back in New Hampshire he goes over to see Will again, to talk about debates. Will’s told him come by at eight. He hears the alarm before he gets there and starts to move faster, almost a run. There’s a crowd outside the building. He looks for her, can’t see her. The pressure rises fast in his chest, hot, tight, suffocating. The alarm is screaming; he can’t get it out of his ears. He grabs Will, screams at him even louder than that clanging bell—“Where the fuck is she?!?” Will looks around, doesn’t know. “Not here yet,” he starts to say, but it’s eight o’clock, Josh knows she’d never come into work that late. An image of her in that damn wheelchair flashes across his thought, and another of her hobbling on those eternal crutches; she’s been off them for months, but what if she’s slipped and messed her leg up again, what if she’s fallen—? The alarm is pounding into his head; he can hear sirens now, thinks he can smell smoke. He pushes Will away and starts to run. For the building. For the door.

Will yells at Josh to stop, but it’s like yelling at the wind; Josh pays no attention, doesn’t even hear him. Will starts to run after him, but Josh is hard to keep up with even when he’s walking and doesn’t have a head start; now he’s running full out, like a crazy man, like he’s running for his life. The door closes behind him, and someone’s got Will by the arms now, telling him not to be an idiot and asking what the hell is going on, and nobody else is going after Josh.

The first firetruck pulls up at the same moment, the firemen piling out of it, all black boots and big strides, and Will pulls away from his staffers and runs towards the truck and the men. And that’s when Donna shows up, making her way towards him from the street, a paper coffeecup from the shop on the corner clutched in her gloved hands. Will’s face is greyer than the week-old snow under their feet, he’s waving his arm towards the building, and two of the firemen take off at a run. Donna stops, asks what’s going on. He shakes his head, can’t find the words to say.

But the staffers around him don’t have any trouble telling her how someone in the building smelled smoke and pulled the alarm, and how they all hurried down the stairs and out, and how this crazy guy showed up and started yelling at Will and then ran back into the building. Donna’s staring at Will now, and something must be wrong with her voice, because she barely gets the word out: “Who?” And Will still can’t tell her, but Devin, who’s about twenty-one and smart as a whip and utterly clueless, says it was that guy from the Santos campaign, wasn’t it, Mr. Bailey? And then Will finds his voice and tells the kid, for God’s sake, how do you expect to be anything in this game if you don’t even know who he is, and the kid is staring at him, and Donna’s coffee is splashing all over their feet as her cup goes down. And then she starts to run, but the firemen are everywhere now and won’t let her get anywhere near. 

It’s probably just a few minutes, but it seems like weeks or months or even years before the doors open and a couple of big firemen stride out with Josh between them. Their arms are under his, supporting him, or maybe just forcing him out of the building. His face is white, his tie’s pulled down, and his collar’s open, his shirt is soaked with sweat, but he’s on his feet and he seems to be arguing with them. Will has caught up with Donna and puts his arm around her, which she hardly notices at first; but when Josh is brought out, she sags against it with relief. Then a camera flash goes off somewhere, and another, and another, and Will feels her go rigid again. “No,” she whispers. “No.”

But of course it’s yes. Yes, the press has recognized Josh; yes, it’s a story. The flashes are going full-time as the firemen hand him over to a couple of burly cops who’ve followed them to the scene, and as the cops put him into their car. Donna tries to pull away from Will to run after them, but he tightens his grip around her, hard. 

“No, Donna,” he says. “Stay out of it. You can’t go over there.” 

“I have to,” she says, on a sob. “I have to!” 

“You can’t,” he says. “I’ll take you to the station, if you want, but you can’t get into these shots now, you know that, Donna, you can’t.”

The squad car pulls away from the curb then anyway, so she doesn’t have any choice except to run beside Will back to his parking space behind the building and get in his car. He puts it into gear and backs out onto the street. The police car’s long gone and he has no idea where the station is, but he figures if he heads in the same direction they did, he’ll find it. It’s not that big a town.

* * *

Will looks sideways at Donna, who’s leaning back in her seat, her eyes squeezed shut tight. He can’t tell what she’s thinking. He never can.

“It’s not what you think,” she says, suddenly.

That surprises him.

“What isn’t what I think?”

“That—what just happened, just now. It’s not—it doesn’t mean—what you think it means.”

“What do I think it means?”

She’s twisting the strap of her purse between her hands. 

“There’s never been anything between us,” she says, very fast. “Between me and Josh. I know people think there was, but there wasn’t. Not ever.”

Will doesn’t know what makes him say it, except that he’s a guy, and Josh is a guy, and he’s always liked him—respected him, admired him—and felt sorry for him, too, in a strange sort of way—and he’s still feeling shaken to the core by what’s just happened.

“There ought to have been,” he says, shortly, shifting gears. 

Donna makes a strange little sound between a gulp and a gasp.

“What—what do you mean?” she asks.

Will shifts again. He’s surprised by the sudden surge of anger that shoots through him. 

“For God’s sake, Donna,” he snaps. “He loves you. And you love him.”

“No,” she protests. “No. I told you—what just happened—it doesn’t mean what it looks like—”

“What does it mean, then?” Will asks, a little more calmly. 

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you?”

“They told me lots of things,” Will says. “Almost the first one of which was never, ever to try asking you out, because there’d be hell to pay with Josh if I did.”

Donna closes her eyes and bites her lip.

“I know,” she says. “I know he always did that. But that was just—Josh. Liking to control things. Liking to control _me_.”

“Guys act like that,” Will says, “when they’re jealous.”

“Will—”

“Look,” he goes on, a little roughly. “I know it’s none of my business. I’m glad I’ve got you working on my campaign, not his. But that guy just ran into a burning building because he thought you were there; it couldn’t be more obvious how he feels about you. And I always thought you cared for him.”

Donna draws a long, shaky breath.

“Will,” she says, desperately. “He doesn’t—it doesn’t mean that—what just happened doesn’t mean what you think it means. Don’t you _know_? It’s because of what happened when Josh was young. His sister—”

Will puts the brakes on, hard. They’re right in front of the police station but he hasn’t put his signal on, he isn’t trying to turn into the lot. He just stops the car in the middle of the street and stares at her. Fortunately the traffic is light and nobody hits him, though the driver right behind him honks in annoyance before pulling around.

“Donna,” he says, disbelievingly. “It’s not about that.” 

Because of course he knows. Not all of it, not all the details, but he’s heard things, everyone who’s worked at the White House has heard some part of that story on the rumor mill, just as they all know that Josh probably has a thing about Donna, and Donna probably has a thing about Josh, though nobody’s ever really sure what the hell exactly is going on in either of their heads. The one thing everybody’s sure about is that probably nothing has ever actually happened between them, but it should.

“You can’t possibly think today was about that,” Will says again, flatly.

“ _Of course it was_ ,” she sobs, unfastening her belt and opening the door, right there, in the middle of the street, and Will yells at her to get back in, but she’s already out of the car and running across the street to the station. It’s a good thing this is a small town and there isn’t more traffic, but even so somebody’s already honking again from behind him, and a car that screeched to a stop for Donna is moving again so he can’t make the turn, and he’s so distracted and shaken up still that he just puts his foot on the gas and keeps going, and then he has to circle around the block and come back again before he can turn into the lot and park the car and go in to find them.

* * *

Another car pulls into the police-station lot just after Will does. Will is halfway to the front door before the car has stopped, but the driver has long legs and overtakes him on the steps. Will glances up at him. It’s Matt Santos. His mouth is set tightly; he doesn’t look pleased at all. 

Donna is talking to a young female officer behind the desk. She looks up when Will comes in and steps towards him. Santos is right there behind him. 

“They’ve taken him to the hospital,” she says to both of them, her voice barely under control. The three of them turn and jog down the stairs again, an odd trio, nobody saying anything to anyone else.

Donna’s gotten the directions to the hospital. Matt follows in his own car. The press guys are waiting outside; they’re not allowed in. Their flashes go off when the two cars discharge their occupants. It’s a small town, but the primaries are big news, and everyone who’s covering them knows exactly who Josh Lyman, Will Bailey, and Matt Santos are.

The admitting nurse doesn’t, though, or else she just doesn’t care: hospitals have their procedures, and it’s her job to enforce them. But after a heated discussion she finally agrees to go and find out what’s happening, then send someone out to talk to Matt. He’s the only one she pays any attention to; Will isn’t sure if that’s because he’s one of the candidates, or because his height makes him pretty impressive when he leans over her desk, or if it’s just because he’s said Josh works for him, while Will and Donna really have no way of identifying their relationship with Josh at all except as “friends.” 

Not that Will has said much; he spends most of the time while the others are arguing punching away at his BlackBerry, getting updates about the fire. Apparently it was only a small one and easily put out, though the fire chief tells Will no one should go back into the building until his men have finished investigating what caused it, so Will sends a round of text messages telling his people to go home. Donna’s phone beeps for the message just after he hits “Send.” She reaches in her purse and turns it off without looking at it.

The nurse leaves. The minutes drag by. Matt finally breaks the silence. 

“So, you’re friends of Josh’s, are you?” 

Will nods.

“I thought you were the opposition.” 

“That’s politics,” Will says, with a shrug. 

“The worst thing about politics,” Matt says with a grimace, and Donna flushes and turns her eyes away.

“We won’t use this,” Will says. Matt eyes him curiously. 

“Really? What’s Russell going to say about that?” This time it’s Will who flushes and turns away. 

“What the hell happened, anyway?” Matt asks, after a minute. “All I know is I got a call saying my campaign manager had been hauled out of a burning building by the fire department and handed over to the cops. It wasn’t even our building that was on fire.”

Will and Donna look at each other. Will clears his throat. “It’s—complicated,” he begins. But just then the nurse reappears with one of the policemen.

“I understand Mr. Lyman works for one of you?” the cop says, looking in their direction, so Matt gets up and follows him out of the room.

* * *

Donna sits down suddenly on one of the lobby chairs, her knees shaking but her back straight. Will stays standing in front of her, shifting from one foot to the other, and glancing back and forth between her and his BlackBerry and the door the nurse and the policeman took Matt through.

“Donna,” he says after a minute or two, “I’ve really got to get back.”

“I know,” she says.

“You want to stay, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a call when you’re done, and I’ll come and get you.”

“Thanks, Will.”

“Donna—”

“What?”

“Look—what we were saying, before?”

Donna flushes a little.

“Yes, Will?”

“It’s not like this was the only time, Donna. It may have been the most dramatic, but it wasn’t the only time.”

“What—do you mean?”

“I saw him, years ago. Something had happened—I never knew what, but it was the President’s second Inauguration and you were supposed to be at one of the balls but hadn’t shown up, and Josh pushed me and Toby and Charlie and Danny Concannon into a taxi and made us come and get you. You must remember. You didn’t see him before that, though: he’d been looking at his watch every five seconds, wondering where you were, if you were okay. It was the President’s Inauguration night but you were all he was thinking about, and then when he saw you—my God, you were all he had eyes for, Donna, anyone could see that. 

“And you didn’t see him last year when you were hurt. We were all outside the Oval, talking about how to respond to the attack, and he was more uptight than I’d ever seen him, and then Kate said something—I think that we should be thinking about this as an opportunity for negotiating a peace deal—and Josh just came undone. He said we should kill everyone there—everyone who’d done it, everyone who’d helped them, everyone who was even _happy_ about what had happened. He was over the edge. If he could have gotten anyone to listen to him, he’d have carpet-bombed the whole Gaza strip, and anyplace else he thought he might be able to get at anyone who’d helped to hurt you. Leo finally told him he’d better go to you if he needed to, and he was out of there before I could blink. Everyone was upset about what had happened, Donna, everyone was worried sick about you, but Josh—he was crazy with it. Just crazy. We were all wondering what was going to happen to him if you didn’t make it. Or even if you did.”

Donna stares at him wide-eyed. 

“He wanted to— _bomb_ them?” she says, a little breathless, because that’s not Josh; Josh might yell, or even grab someone and shove them up against a wall when he’s really been pushed to his limit, but that’s as far as his instinct to violence ever goes. He’s a Democrat through and through: he doesn’t even like the military, or at least military solutions to diplomatic problems. He doesn’t like bombs, or guns, or anything else he’d call Republican. 

“He’d have nuked them if he’d had the chance, Donna. He’d have pushed the button himself if anyone had brought it to him. He was beside himself.”

She blinks hard, and looks down at her clenched hands.

“It doesn’t mean—it’s just because—” But her voice doesn’t sound convincing, even to herself.

“Donna, you can’t tell me that didn’t mean something; I was there. I may not know Josh as well as you do, but I know him well enough to know he’s more than capable of looking after himself most of the time. He doesn’t run into every burning building he passes, he doesn’t lose his cool in every meeting when he’s got to make tough decisions about other people’s lives. He’s built a career on making tough decisions that end up benefiting some people and hurting others—”

“You don’t know how much he hates that part of it,” Donna whispers. “You don’t know how hard it is on him, when he has to do that.”

“No, I don’t. But you _do_ , Donna! My God, listen to you! You _know_ him. You know what he cares about, what gets to him, the whole deal. And you care about it. You care about _him_. You care about him more than you care about your career; you would have run right into those cameras back there if I hadn’t stopped you, and I saw you turn your phone off without even looking at my message just now. You love him, how can you deny it?”

The color leaches slowly out of Donna’s face, leaving her deathly pale. She looks up at Will. Her lips are trembling.

“Will,” she begins, tremulously, but all Will can think is that he’s just seen a man run straight into a burning building, and that this thing between these two has passed ridiculous and traveled on into air so thin it just can’t be allowed to go on anymore, or someone’s really going to get hurt. So he cuts her off and keeps talking.

“And _he loves you_ , Donna. Nobody could miss it. Nobody except _you_ , and I have no idea why, or what’s gone on between you two all these years that makes it so hard for either one of you to see what’s happening with the other right in front of your face, but I know it’s got to stop before it kills one of you. Because it’s going to, if things keep going like this. And I’d lay good money at this point it’ll be Josh it gets first, and then what are you going to do, Donna? What are you going to do?”

“That’s—not—fair,” Donna says, her voice shaking like the wheels are really coming off now, and suddenly they’re gone and she can’t hold back anymore, and her eyes fill up and overflow. She tries to turn so Will won’t see, but of course he does, and as soon as he sees he feels like the worst kind of jerk. So he squats down beside her, which makes him feel a bit ridiculous since he’s shorter than she is to begin with, but he ignores that and pats her gently on the back and says he’s sorry.

“That’s—not— _fair_ ,” Donna gasps out again, ignoring his apologies. “It could—kill— _me_ first. It’s got to. It’s got to. It’s _got_ to!” 

She sounds over the edge, completely overwrought, but Will can’t blame her; he’s still feeling shaken up himself by what happened that morning, and, unlike Donna, he’s not in love with Josh Lyman and never has been.

“Donna,” he says gently, still rubbing her back a little. “Why let it kill either one of you?”

She stares up at him.

“What?” she asks, almost groggily.

“Why can’t you just—get together and be happy?” 

He winces as the words come out of his mouth; so now he’s a dispenser of romantic platitudes. He should go on Oprah or Phil or something. He’d like to go and hide somewhere to get out of this conversation, and yet he’s glad just the same that he got that out there, because it feels like something _someone_ should have said years ago.

“It’s not that simple!” she wails. “You don’t understand! It’s not that simple at all!”

“No, of course it isn’t,” he says, backtracking hastily. “I know; it couldn’t be; it never is. But—wouldn’t anything be better than this?”

“We’d just—end up—hurting each other. We always do. We—”

“Yeah,” Will says, feeling suddenly old and sage and like maybe he’d have something worth saying on Oprah after all, “maybe you would. But then, you’re hurting each other _now_. If you were together, at least you’d both be there to pick up the pieces for each other afterwards, wouldn’t you? And maybe there’d be some good stuff in between, too, that would make it all worthwhile.”

Donna doesn’t say anything, just looks down at her hands, her purse, anywhere except his face. He can see hers, though, and sees that her mouth is still trembling, and the tears still running down her face. She fumbles about in her bag, looking for something she doesn’t seem able to find; Will watches her, then looks around the room until he sees a box of kleenex on a table, and hands her the whole thing. She says “thanks” in a very small voice, takes a handful out, wipes her face, blows her nose. Then she picks up the purse and gets to her feet, looking around. 

“I think it’s over there,” Will says, pointing to the ladies’ room.

“Thank you,” she says again, still in that tiny voice, and heads off. Will checks his BlackBerry again. He really should be getting back to check on the firemen and the building and the staff, but he’s going to wait till Donna comes out again to make sure she’s all right. He fills in the time reading his messages and answering them.

Donna comes out again a few minutes later, her makeup freshened up, her face composed. Unless he looks hard at her eyes, Will couldn’t tell she’s been crying. “You okay?” he asks, and she nods, and he says, “I’ve really got to get back now,” and she says, “Of course,” and just then Matt Santos strides back into the room. Donna’s on him in a second: “How is he? Is he all right?” And of course Will waits to hear, too.

Matt doesn’t answer directly. He looks at them both, and Will realizes his face is set in grim lines and he looks angry. “Well,” he says, “I guess you’ve won. I’m out of the race.” 

Will raises his eyebrows, and Donna shrieks, “ _What_?” Matt shrugs.

“He’s quit,” he says, and starts to walk away. Will feels stunned; Donna looks as if someone’s hit her in the face. Then she runs after Matt and grabs him by the arm.

“ _No_ ,” she says. “You can’t do that. You can’t let _him_ do that.”

Matt looks down at her, bemused, and Will stifles a groan. 

“Donna,” he starts, but then shakes his head and sighs and sits back down to watch this thing play out.

“I thought you’d be glad,” Matt Santos says, raising an eyebrow. “I might not have been able to take your guy yet, but I was starting to snap at your heels.”

“You _can’t do that_ ,” Donna says again, her voice rising. “You can’t drop out now! You can’t do that to Josh! You can’t let _Josh_ do that!”

“What choice do I have?” Matt asks, heavily. “He’s resigned. He says I should get somebody else to run my campaign, but I told him from the start there wasn’t anybody else I’d want to work with. I’m not doing this without him.”

“He’s just resigned because he thinks he’s embarrassed your campaign—”

“No kidding. He acted like a lunatic. The press were there; they got pictures of him being carted off by the police; it’ll be all over the news tomorrow.”

Donna waves her hand impatiently.

“That doesn’t matter! You can handle that easily. If he wasn’t in such a state he’d see that himself. He must not be sleeping; he must have worn himself out; he’ll be exhausted—”

The corners of Matt’s mouth twitch a little, putting a curious mix of expressions on his face.

“Who exactly are you again?” he asks. 

“Josh’s assistant,” Donna says automatically, and then blushes and says, “I mean, I was Josh’s assistant. Until a couple of months ago, I was.”

“I see,” Matt says slowly, still looking at her with that strange, almost-amused expression fighting the other emotions in his face. “And now?”

She ignores the question. 

“You’ve got to understand Josh,” she says, her voice urgent. “You’ve _got_ to understand him. He—he gets like this sometimes. Or at least—not exactly like this, but—”

“Josh has PTSD,” Will says quietly, from just behind Donna’s shoulder. She swings around, surprised, accusatory. Matt’s eyes widen.

“I didn’t know that,” he says.

“From when he was shot,” Will says, still in that quiet voice, so no one else in the lobby can hear. “And no, we won’t be doing anything with it. If the Vice-President wants to, I’ll tell him it’s a no-go; I’m not running that kind of campaign. It would get away from us anyway. All your people would have to do is tell the press why this happened today, and Josh would be a hero, and we’d look like a bunch of jerks for treating him like anything else.”

Matt nods, slowly. 

“I’m not sure,” he says, “that I entirely understand what _did_ happen today.”

“He was _tired_ ,” Donna says again. Will rolls his eyes; he can’t help himself.

“You’re right,” Matt says. “He is too tired. I’ve been noticing it, wondering how much sleep he’s been getting; he always seems to do a lot of work after I’ve gone to bed at night. And I understand what effect that might have on someone managing a stress disorder like PTSD.” 

She nods.

“He’s had treatment for it?” 

She nods again.

“It’s not a problem; it’s not going to be a problem for you,” she says, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s never affected his performance on the job, not once it was diagnosed—and not before that, really. It’s just—he needs to take care of himself. He needs someone to help him take care. His assistant should be—”

Matt laughs, a little grimly.

“Josh doesn’t have an assistant,” he points out. “We don’t have the budget to hire assistants. We need all our cash for ad buys so we can make a decent showing against your guy.’

Will wouldn’t have thought that Donna’s face could get any whiter, but it does. 

“He needs to get more sleep,” she says, urgently again, though, like Will, she keeps her voice low. “He’ll run himself ragged if you let him. He does that all the time anyway, but if it goes too far, he—someone needs to see that he gets some sleep.”

“I can talk to him about that,” Matt says, gently. “Or I can try. But I still don’t really understand what happened today. Even lack of sleep and PTSD—running _into_ a burning building? Why the hell would he do that?”

Donna is silent. So is Will.

“And then fighting with the firemen when they told him to leave,” Matt goes on. “I gather there wasn’t really much danger—the fire was a small one, the cop said, in the basement, there wasn’t that much smoke yet, but they had to force him out of the building, which is why they had the cops bring him here for observation. He’s all right,” he adds, seeing Donna’s face, “at least, physically. They gave him some oxygen to clear his lungs out, but he’s going to be fine. And they’re not going to charge him with anything. But there had to have been something to make him run in there in the first place. Unless—there wasn’t, and he just snapped. In which case, he really isn’t going to be able to work on my campaign or anyone else’s until he gets his head straightened out.”

“Josh,” Donna says then, in a very small voice, “has a—a thing—about fires—”

Matt looks at her curiously, but she stops and shakes her head and won’t go on. It’s Will who fills Matt in on the bits and pieces he knows about Josh’s sister and how she died, and then says,

“But it wasn’t just because of that, Congressman. He thought Donna was in there. He came by for a meeting with me; he heard the alarm going off and saw the crowd and didn’t see Donna anywhere. She’d stepped out for some coffee, but nobody knew that. He grabbed me and asked where she was, and when I couldn’t tell him, he turned around and ran in to find her.”

There’s a long pause. Matt looks at Donna wonderingly. Her eyes are bright with tears, but she pulls herself up as tall as she can, tips her chin up so she can look him right in the face, and says,

“I worked for Josh for eight years, Congressman, and then I left. I left unexpectedly. I didn’t train his next assistant; I didn’t even give him any notice. I was angry with him, and I’m sure he was angry with me after that; we’ve barely spoken to each other since. I went to work on Bob Russell’s campaign, and then Josh started working on yours. But this morning he ran into that building because he thought I was there. And that’s all you need to say, isn’t it, when those pictures show up in the press? That’s the kind of man he is: one who’d risk his own life before he’d let someone else get hurt, no matter what she’d done or how angry he was with her for doing it. That’s the kind of man you have working for you. That’s the kind of man who asked you to run for President. And if you let him down by accepting his resignation or dropping out of the race now, I—I—I _won’t vote for you_!!!”

And then she shuts her mouth hard, and walks very fast out of the room.

* * *

Matt looks at Will, his eyebrows raised, and Will looks back at Matt, shaking his head, and shrugs. 

“It’s complicated,” he says.

“Obviously,” says Matt.

“Are you going to hire her out from under me?”

“Would she work for me? I can’t offer her much.”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re not going to fire her for that, are you?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course not.”

“So, these two—?”

“Need to see each other.”

“I’d take her back there, but she’s left.”

“She won’t have gone far.”

She hasn’t. She’s leaning against the wall in the corridor just outside the lobby, her arms folded across her chest, frowning at the floor. Matt takes her by the arm and leads her gently back to see Josh, nodding at the admissions nurse as they go by.

* * *

He’s sitting up on one of those narrow examining tables, his tie off and his shirt untucked, leaning back against the wall with his eyes shut. There’s an oxygen mask lying beside him. He isn’t using it anymore and he’s got some color back in his face, but he still looks worn out. Donna’s heart leaps when she sees him, and takes up a rapid little step-dance in her chest. 

“Josh?”

He opens his eyes, which makes him look even more exhausted than he did when they were closed.

“Donna?”

“Are you all right, Josh?”

“Yeah.”

“You look awful.”

“I’m okay.”

“I can’t believe you _did_ that.”

“I’m sorry. It was pretty stupid. I didn’t mean to make such a scene.”

“It was an absolutely _insanely_ stupid thing to do, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for it, but you don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I don’t have a job anymore.”

“Yes, you do, Josh.”

“I just resigned.”

“The Congressman won’t accept it.”

“Yeah, he will. He has to. It’s going to be a thing. I told him to get another manager, but I don’t know if he’s going to do that; he said he’d pull out. I’ve really made a mess of everything.”

“He’s not going to pull out. And he’s not accepting your resignation.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It is right.”

“How do you know?”

“I told him he couldn’t do either of those things.”

“Right. And he listened to you?”

“I said I wouldn’t vote for him if he didn’t.”

“Well, that makes sense.”

“It does, actually.”

“In a way only you could come up with.”

“People do listen to me now, Josh. I’m getting good at this.”

There’s a long pause. Then Josh says, in a strained sort of voice,

“You always were good, Donna.”

“You don’t really mean that.”

“I _do_ mean it, Donna!” He sounds indignant now. “And I did listen to you, often. A lot. I—” He pauses again. Then he says, in an entirely different tone, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I didn’t—if I didn’t let you know that enough.” 

“It’s all right, Josh.”

“It really isn’t.” There’s another pause. He takes a deep breath. “And—look, I’ve been wanting to say this for ages. I’m sorry I didn’t keep any of those lunch dates you wanted. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to listen to you, or didn’t care what you were asking for. But I knew you wanted to talk about doing something different, and I—I just couldn’t face it. Everything was so crazy, and I—I needed you there. I just couldn’t face the idea of your—moving on. Leaving.”

“I’m sorry, Josh. I really am. I shouldn’t have. I . . . .” 

Her voice trails away. He shakes his head.

“Oh, sure you should, Donna,” he says, sounding suddenly very tired. “Just because I didn’t want it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good thing for you to do. It’s got you what you wanted, hasn’t it? A good job with some real opportunities to grow. I could never get that for you; I couldn’t afford to give you the time to do much more than what you were doing. I really needed a full-time assistant. I really needed _two_ full-time assistants, or maybe three or four, but I only had the budget for one, and you were so good we were able to make it work, just you and me. Or—well, I thought we made it work. I guess it wasn’t really working very well for you.”

“Oh, it did, Josh—it did. For years it did. And if it stopped working for me, it wasn’t your fault, Josh! You really don’t have anything to apologize for. You were doing about eighteen different jobs yourself, all of them hugely important, all at the same time; of course you needed a full-time assistant, of course you couldn’t afford to let me do something more that would have taken me away from what you needed done. And I shouldn’t have expected you to, just because I wanted it.”

“I wish I could have, Donna. I hate that I couldn’t get you what you wanted, that I let you down.”

“You didn’t, Josh.”

“I really did, Donna, I know that. I’ve been making quite a specialty out of letting people down lately, haven’t I?”

“You _didn’t_ , Josh; you _haven’t_. You flew to Germany when I was hurt, when I needed you—that wasn’t letting me down. And look at today. You—you ran into that building, and if that fire had been worse you—you could have—you might have—you could have been _killed_ , Josh! And it was because you thought I was in there, wasn’t it?”

“I—well—”

“Will told me what happened, Josh.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course. I—”

His face turns red with embarrassment. She leans across the examining table. His lips are dry and chapped and his mouth tastes of the oxygen mask and stale coffee, but she doesn’t care; she’s never kissed anybody so long or so hard in her life. After the first stunned moment he’s kissing her back as if his life depended on it. His life, and hers— which they probably do.

* * *

“Joshua?”

“Yes, Donnatella?”

They’re back in his motel room now, a nurse with a clipboard having come into the hospital room to check Josh’s statistics while they were still kissing on the examining table, and told them they should go home. Quite a lot has happened since then. They’re lying together on his rumpled bed, his arm still around her, holding her as close to him as he can.

“You really need to start getting more sleep.”

“Right now, you mean?”

“No, not right now, though I think pretty soon. I mean, normally. Every night.”

“I’ve got a campaign to run, Donna. You can’t expect me to do that and get eight hours a night, too.”

“I don’t, but I think you need to get a lot more than you’ve been getting. You really need an assistant again. You’ve just got too much to worry about on your own; you need somebody to help you with some of it, so you _can_ get more sleep at night.”

“I know I need one, Donna, but I can’t have one. We don’t have that kind of money yet; we—”

“You can find a little money, surely, Josh.”

“A very little. But I couldn’t get anyone who was any good for it, and somebody who wasn’t good would be worse than nobody at all.”

“Of course you could get someone good.”

“Yeah, right. Who?”

“You could get me.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You heard me.”

“What???”

“You heard me, Josh.”

“You’d—work—for me? Again?”

“Yes, Josh.”

“As my _assistant_?”

“Yes, Josh.”

“You can’t do that, Donna. You left so you could do something more. You—”

“I’d be doing something more.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a small campaign, isn’t it? You’re going to need a lot of different kinds of assistance, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes. Of course. I’m sorry, I thought you meant—”

“I did mean. You need a different kind of assistant now, though—someone who can help in a lot of different ways. I can do the same things for you that I’ve been doing for Will, can’t I? While still doing some of the things I used to do for you?”

“I—you’d do that?”

“Yes, I would. I’d love to.”

“It would mean a cut in pay.”

“It would be worth it, if we can get Matt Santos in. That’s another reason it would be doing more. Working for Santos would _mean_ more. Bob Russell—”

“You shouldn’t be working for Bob Russell, Donna. He isn’t worth it. He isn’t the real thing; he isn’t up to the job.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“The Congressman _is_ worth it, Donna. He isn’t Jed Bartlet, of course; nobody else could ever be Jed Bartlet. But I think he’ll make a really good president, just the same. He’s got what it takes. _He’s_ the real thing.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“He is.”

“I know that. But do you know _why_ I know it, Josh?”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the one you’re working for. If you chose him, he must be the best. And that’s all I need to know.”

“That’s—really sweet of you, Donna.”

“It’s really true.”

This time no bustling nurse interrupts them. Josh has no trouble at all getting to sleep that night. Or the night after that. Or the night after that. . . . 

* * *

**December 2006**

“’Busy old fool—‘”

“What?”

“’Unruly sun—‘”

“ _What?_ ”

“’Why dost thou thus,/ Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?’”

“Are you feeling all right, Josh?”

“Never felt better. ‘If her eyes have not blinded thine/Look, and tomorrow late tell me/Whether both th’Indias, of spice and mine,/Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.’”

“Are you actually reciting poetry?”

“I am.”

“Where is Josh Lyman, and what have you done with him?”

“It’s what you’ve done with him, that’s the question. ‘Ask for those kings that thou saw’st yesterday,/ And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.’”

“This is just bizarre.”

“It’s John Donne. ‘She is all states, and all princes, I.’”

“I can’t believe you’ve memorized poetry.”

“Just this poem.”

“Why on earth?”

“I always liked it. And it kind of sums up how I’ve been feeling for the last few months, so I looked it up again the other day.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s about this guy talking to the sun.”

“And I thought it was just you who were crazy.”

“He’s telling the sun not to bother him, because he’s been having such a wonderful time in bed that he doesn’t want to get up and leave his lover.”

“Maybe that’s not so crazy. I could relate to that right now.”

“I thought you might.”

“Egotist.”

“He says that she’s like all the kingdoms of the world put together, and he feels like all the kings.”

“Definitely egotist. It should be presidents for you, anyway.”

“That wouldn’t sound as good.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

“And then he says that nothing else in the world really matters to him except her, and their being together. ‘Nothing else is.’”

“That’s really sweet.”

“It’s how you make me feel.”

“Oh, Josh. It’s how you make me feel, too.”

“I love you, Donna.”

“I love you too, Josh.”

“I always have, you know.”

“I always have too, Josh.”

“And I always will.”

“I always will too, sweetheart. Always. I promise.”

“I promise too, Donna. That’s what I wanted to tell you this morning: I promise I’ll always love you, all my life, no matter what. There’s nobody else I want, Donna. There never will be. It’s just you.”

“Oh, Josh. I’ll never want anyone else, either; it’s just you for me, too. It always has been, and it always will be, and I’ll never leave you again, I promise. I promise. I promise. Oh, Josh, are you—?”

“I’m—sorry. I didn’t— think I would, but—”

“It’s okay, Josh. I’m crying, too.”

“I really do love you, Donna.”

“I really do love you too, Josh. Always.”

 

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,   
Why dost thou thus,  
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?   
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?   
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide   
Late school-boys and sour prentices,   
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,   
Call country ants to harvest offices;  
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,   
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. 

Thy beams so reverend, and strong   
Why shouldst thou think?   
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,   
But that I would not lose her sight so long.   
If her eyes have not blinded thine,   
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,   
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine   
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.   
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,   
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay." 

She'is all states, and all princes I;  
Nothing else is.   
Princes do but play us; compared to this,   
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.   
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,   
In that the world's contracted thus;   
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be   
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.   
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;   
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

* * *  
* * *


End file.
